Friday, July 17, 2009

Snakes

On our last day in India, during a 6 1/2 hr. drive from Agra to Delhi (where three of us had planes to catch at about midnight), we stopped for snacks, sodas, and water.

A snake charmer was nearby, displaying his cobra and small boa constrictor, so we walked over to watch.

"This is a really dangerous profession," Nita Kumar explained to us. "First he goes into the jungle and catches the snakes. Then he removes the poison from the cobra. Also, snake charming is illegal now."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because of the drive to end cruelty to animals. You can't keep monkeys and make them perform, or snakes, or anything."

I was awed. The concept of kindness to snakes was new to me.

As a child in Colorado, I had enjoyed garter snakes and king snakes, so I took my turn in the illegal activity and paid fifty rupees to the owner of these animals.

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In memory of Martha Puebla & In honor of Maria Riveros

On a spring night in 2003, Martha Puebla, age 16, was shot in the face while sitting outside her home in Sun Valley, California, near Los Angeles. Her death was ordered by a gang member on trial for a murder she had witnessed.

On July 13, 2008, in San Ignacio, Paraguay, Maria Riveros took her pregnant 16-year-old daughter to the home of an obstetrician and asked her to perform an abortion. The fetus of about 4 mo. was buried outside the home, but there were complications and the next day Maria had to rush her daughter to a hospital, where a hysterectomy was performed. The obstetrician and her daughter, a nurse, were arrested and charged with performing an abortion.

This blog is dedicated to Martha, Maria and all women who courageously negotiate their lives in this world filled with gang warfare and international warfare, poverty and wealth, drug trafficking and addiction, and lack of access to birth control, legal abortion, and other health care.